Chickpea Nuggets with Escarole in Caramel Sauce

As I am writing this, I feel the urge to sneak into the kitchen to nibble on another of these chickpea nuggets. (Back again).
I have found that the food matters project makes me search for meat alternatives, while I usually just go without. I am not really one to buy fake meat or use tofu in abundance. I usually go for chickpeas, beans or lentils if I feel the need to add protein to a dish.
But for this project, I felt I needed to change this approach. For the coq au vin, I just left out the meat altogether, but doing that for another week for the cassoulet seemed kind of strange, and then this week: rhubarb sauce alone does not really sound like much of a meal. But luckily I stumbled onto this recipe for chickpea nuggets, or gatta as it is called, and new that I wanted to give them a try. They are really easy to make, but oh so delicious. While last weeks sausages need some improving, these I can really recommend. They can also be frozen (I guess, none survived to try it out), or dried as the recipe I found suggests.

For the sauce I used the escarole version Bittman suggests as a variation. Rhubarb is still not quite in season here, and I had escarole already at home. I also used a radicchio I had in the fridge. Since I stayed true to the original recipe this week, I only include the recipe for the chickpea nuggets here, please go to Camilla's blog for the whole recipe and check out what everyone else did with this recipe here. I have to say though that while I loved the nuggets, I wasn't too crazy about the sauce. It was to liquid, sweet and orangey. Something was missing and I couldn't find out what.
I also used these nuggets in a couscous dish a made earlier in the week. Cooked some couscous. stirfried some fennel and pea shoots, add the couscous to the skillet, season with a curry powder, throw in some apple and the chickpea nuggets. I liked that better than this recipe, and might make it again and share it with proper measurements.

Spring Rolls with Coffee Tofu and Miso-Marinated Carrots

Today I felt a bit off. I didn't plan much for the easter holidays and found the prospect of just sitting around stressed me out. This weekend, the weather is pretty bad: it is cold, it rains, it is just gloomy.
I spent the day inside, paying some bills I put off paying (no wonder I felt stressed out), cleaning a bit, putting things where they belong. I washed my clothes (another thing I put off doing this week), baked some bread, and by the afternoon I felt a lot better.

I also made these spring rolls. They were inspired by the Wintery Spring Rolls from 101cookbooks and these soy-glazed roasted carrot spring rolls from Naturally Ella. And by Joy the Baker and her coffee bacon.

Making cute food, that takes some time to make, always relaxes me.

Baked Grains with Apple

I always seem to be looking for an easy option for breakfast. During all my life until now I had about the same breakfast, every single day.
Two or three slices of  bread, butter, topped with jam or honey. That is what my family eats for breakfast, and it has been what I ate even when I moved out.
I have written before about how I find that this is not really a filling breakfast, an hour or two later I feel hungry again and so I am on the look for breakfast option that don't require lots of time in the morning. These baked grains can be made the day before and reheated in the morning or eaten cold. They make also a great portable breakfast or lunch. And they can help you use up all of these grains that I keep buying.

Vegetarian Sausage and Bean Flatbread

The inspiration for this weeks recipe took quite a while to come to me. It must have taken a long detour, because for the whole week, I just did not know what to do with the cassoulet. My mistake was to google pictures, and really, it looked like the last thing I would want to eat.
So I had zero inspiration to do something with these ingredients. I decided half-inspired to try to make vegetarian sausage to use later in the week for this weeks recipe.
It wasn't until Saturday that inspiration came by for a short visit before leaving again. Put it all in or on something, instead of cooking it all together as a stew. Well, that is how I ended up deconstructing the original recipe for cassoulet.
Maybe I'm taking the recipe a bit too far from the original,  somehow I usually end up with something completely different. But it is just how I cook. I am more inspired by the ingredients than by the recipe itself. I try working with the combination of flavors or the idea I see in the recipe. Only really rarely do I go out and buy just the right thing to make this recipe I read about. And really, this is how I would love you to read the recipes I post here. You certainly can follow the recipe, and it should hopefully turn out as well as when I made it, but more than that, I would love you to go from the idea you see in my recipes and turn it into your recipe. To me, this is what makes cooking fun, why I keep cooking, throwing together food to turn it into meals.

Best Bread I Ever Made (So Far)

I wanted to bake my own bread for quite some time now. I go through phases like that. I start making my own yogurt. I experiment with making my own skin care products. I get obsessed with some sort of plant or animal. Most of the time, our relation stays superficial. I can tell you a lot about how to set up a fitness routine, but after a few months of consistently running three times a week, I just got tired of it. I took best care of my orchid for quite some time, now it doesn't exactly thrive. I am known to order books in the libary to learn something new, and once they arrive, I'm already interested in something else.
But bread baking and I, we entered into a different phase in our relationship. At least that is what I hope. I feel too old for this short affairs, I need something longer lasting.
I can't remember our first date, but I can certainly recall that our relationship did not have a completely smooth start. There were some hard loaves, too much whole grains, but we've come to a place where it just feels right.
This loaf feels right. He's doesn't raise false expectations with a sparkly exterior (although I think it looks really appealing), isn't all dressed up in fancy seeds or perfumed with garlic, butter, or herbs, but I'd say he is the right loaf to share the rest of your life with.

Légumes d'Hiver au Vin

When I am in France, looking at le menu, I usually chuckle a bit when reading le menu. Everything has really fancy names, the meat is served avec sa sauce de, or sur son lit de. And often the time spent crafting those fancy sounding titles would have been better spent working on the dishes they serve. Lesson learned: Not everything that sounds fancy, is fancy.

That seems to be the theme for many situations in life. What looks great at first glance may not be so great when looked at closer. Like the first course of studies I started that turned out to be wrong for me. Like the ex who turned out to be not right for me. Like the nice shoes that ended up killing my feet.

Sometimes though, things turn out well when you don't really expect them to. Like when we found this Ethiopian restaurant and now love this cuisine and keep going back for more. Like when I met my boyfriend at university, studying what turned out the wrong path, but the right man. Or when you cook something out of humble ingredients and it turns out beautifully.

This weeks Food Matter Project recipe was Vegetables au Vin with Coq. I actually did not really look at the recipe before I decided what I wanted to do. I was also influence by an article about René Redzepi, the chef of Noma (the famous restaurant) and his idea of cooking vegetables like meat. So for this dish, I started cutting all the vegetables in rather large pieces, searing them in a cast-iron skillet until browned and only then braising them in the oven with white wine. You could use any combination of vegetables you want as long as they keep up well enough for searing and braising. Winter vegetables are suited best though, I'd say. In the recipe I list the vegetables I used, but feel free to use anything you have in your fridge (like I did).

Black Bean Burgers

For these burgers, I made the buns myself, the burgers, and even he pickled radishes you can see in this picture. The radishes and the salad came from a local farmer, who brings his organic produce to my door every Tuesday.
And I feels really good to know that I made this. The whole thing.
And I guess it made the hamburgers taste a lot better, knowing the connection I have with the food I am about to eat.
I know that what I eat matters on a global level, but I also came to realize that putting more thought and time into what I eat, makes me appreciate the food a lot more. In a time when lots of people want and do spend less time preparing and eating real food, I feel connected and complete when I stand in the kitchen, preparing food. It almost feels like a rebellious act. 

So I shared my hamburger buns in the last post, and these are the burgers that went into the buns that night. I had never made buns before, mostly because we don't eat to many burgers around here. Considering that they were rather easy to make, I don't think I'd ever buy the packaged stuff again.

Then there were the burgers. They were only the second vegetarian burger I ever made from scratch. (If I remember correctly). They were rather quick to throw together, baked quickly in the oven and made for a really tasty burger.

Soft Pretzel Hamburger Buns

I'm a bit reluctant when it comes to talking about weight and calories etc on this blog. I rarely think about these things when I think about eating. And reading about little girls already being on a diet because they think that they are too fat makes my heart ache. Because losing weight should not be one of the things that matter most to anyone, life is way better than that.

I want to be healthy and moderately fit. This also means that I don't want to weigh a ton, or that I really should not be sitting in front of the computer all day. It also means that at some point I have to stop baking muffins and cookies and more muffins so often. Because, as you might have seen, I have been baking a lot. I still want to bake, to enjoy sweets as part of a balanced diet, but for a while I want to stop baking with flour and sugar. Because I know they do nothing for my body, and when I eat too much of them nothing for my soul. Because a treat is only a treat when it is occasional, but lately muffins were part of my daily diet.
Well, this means that I am back to posting about real meals more often now.

And I'm starting today with homemade hamburger buns. Soft pretzel hamburger buns. Because we can. And Michael Pollan says: Eat all the junk food you want as long as you make it yourself. And because I made black bean burgers to go with them that I would not consider junk food. More on them later in the week, though.

Curried Tomato Stew

I talked about kitchen failures, and about insecurities. And still, I'd like to continue thinking out loud here.
You see, I really love to cook, I enjoy spending time in the kitchen, I talk about food - a lot (just ask my boyfriend), and still, I can get really insecure when it comes to cooking. So often I find myself thinking: "I couldn't do that. This must be really difficult. How does s/he do that? The thought of making x scares me."
I really need to stop doing that, because, you know, these insecurities do not only show up in the kitchen, but also in the rest of my life.
I sometimes nurture my insecurities, tell them that they have a reason to be there, where really, there is nothing to fear.
I have been trying to challenge myself these past weeks, because really, that is the only thing that can take away my fears. Your fears, too. I will continue to challenge myself, and think I want to share some of the things I try as I go on exploring.
But today, I want to share my adaptation of this weeks recipe for the Food Matters Project. It is a really easy recipe, quick to make, but still delicious. And it is great for the days between the challenges,  something that can't really go wrong and warms you from within.

Hummus Feta Soufflé

All I could think of the last days was soufflé. I never made one before, and I think I only had one once, and can't remember how it was. But I just love the idea of a soufflé, what it stands for in my imagination. I imagine that only really fancy people make soufflés, the ones who also have tea parties and wear hats. Or something like that. And while I thought it was a bit over the top to make a soufflé out of humble hummus, I just could not stop thinking about it.

I was a bit afraid to make a soufflé, though. I was afraid of failure, having heard that they are a bit difficult to get right. It felt a bit uncomfortable, moving into new territory. I'd love to think of myself as being a fearless cook, but I'm not. I have many insecurities in the kitchen. I don't know how many times in the past weeks I have said that I would love to try this or that, but don't because I am afraid of it. Afraid of failure. As if the cooking gods would come down to punish me if I end up making an imperfect soufflé.

I think the result was worth the risk, the nervousness, the sweaty hands I had as I stood in front of the oven, waiting for the magic to happen. And it happened, the soufflé rose nicely, but I guess I took it out a minute or two too early. It lost some of it's height. No cooking god came down to punish me, and the soufflé really tasted great. I think I can safely say that it was one of the best things I cooked so far. But perhaps that is just the feeling everyone has after conquering a fear. The hummus flavour did not come through much, but all the flavours combined with the lemon zest, and the light texture made me want to sing. I have that urge when I'm excited about something.

A picture of the not perfectly risen soufflé. I think it is pretty, anyway.

Black Sesame and Pear Muffins

They are delicious, what is in them? - my boyfriend asked?
I always make him guess - I love this little game, it almost makes me feel like a child, at the same time hoping that he finds out and that he doesn't.

Poppy seeds, he said. I knew he would say that and that made me even happier. No poppy seeds in these muffins.

Apples, his second guess. Wrong again. I have a big smile on my face. I want to tell him, but at the same time I want him to find out. But he doesn't. I tell him, happy to have made something unusual, excited about all the possibilities in baking and cooking.

The Surprise Ingredients were Black Sesame and Pear, mixed in with some butter, brown sugar and the other suspects. They are really good, but what I love even more about them is that they make people pause and ask questions.

Seared Bean Sprouts with Tofu and Sesame Orange Sauce

It always makes me a bit sad when people tell me that they can't cook. They are often people who love to eat, but are intimidated by the kitchen and the contents of their fridge. 

We often seem to think that some people are just born with it - it being a talent for drawing, painting, writing, photography, or cooking. I used to think that way, too. I tried many things, always looking for the one thing I was inherently good at. Oh well, what a waste of time it was. 

I learnt a lot in the last year of blogging and cooking and living. I learnt how to cook tofu, because you really can't just treat it like it is meat. I learnt that I can live with less pasta in my life. I learnt that I can change things up in recipes for baked goods, too. I learnt that pistachio seed oil makes everything heavenly (if only it wasn't that expensive). And I still have so much to learn and to explore. Wonderful.

I really hope the Food Matters Project can show some people how easy it is to adapt a recipe. Make it yours.

This weeks recipe,  Seared Bean Sprouts with Beef and Sesame Orange Sauce, was chosen by Dominica from Wine Food Love. Go over to her post to check out the original recipe, and to the Food Matters Project homepage to find all the other takes on this recipe. It is a really easy recipe, but the way I prepare the tofu takes a bit more time than the original version with beef. You could omit the additional step and just marinate the tofu in a bit of the sesame orange sauce for some time in the fridge.

Coconut Pineapple Swirl Crumbcake

Can we talk kitchen failures?
Just last week I wanted to bring a cake to a get together with friends. I was a bit short on time, but everything went well and I baked the cake, removed it from the oven, let it cool down for a few minutes and then put it in a bag and took it with me. And somehow, the cake liquified on the way to my friend. The tester that I inserted came out clean, but when I tried to cut it into slices, the center pour out like in a molten chocolate cake. Exept, it wasnt. We ate some of the crust and had to throw the rest away. And I still don't know why and how on earth this happend. Any ideas?

What is the last thing that went wrong in your kitchen? Please share your stories with me.

But this weeks cake turned out like I imagined it to be. I adapted a recipe I found on the Post Punk Kitchen, Raspberry Jam Swirl Crumbcake. I brought pineapple jam home from my holidays in Spain, and wanted to used it in this cake. I added some coconut to it, made it non-vegan (oops, always happens to me) with the addition of butter in the crumbs, and oh they are good. They are not too sweet, the top is crumbly and crunchy and the tropical flavour just make me feel relaxed, like during a holiday. And they were really easy to make, too. No failures here.

Potato Salad with Greens

If I was born not in the 80ies but in the 90ies, I might have been diagnosed with ADHD. This is a thought that just occured to me today. I always wanted to do too many things at one time. I was always distracted, thinking about something else. I was a good student, so nobody complained, but I often forgot my homework, the coursebooks and the library books, too. The only time I did only one thing was when I read a book. I read a ton of books back then. Somehow I stopped, I don't really remember when or why, it brought my so much pleasure.
And still today, I have difficulty doing one thing right, not many things at once. I start writing here, then suddenly it occurs to might that I wanted to write an email, do the dishes, that I wanted to look up this recipe, or that I wanted to look up this movie that I read of in the newspaper. I am a tabs-person - at the moment I have 8 tabs open, one with a bread recipe, a basic yoga routine , some blogs, and a dictionary. I have stacks of books to read, dealing with new topics that I became interested in. I want to learn to draw and paint, I want to learn about the art of photography, about master bread-baking, and many things more. I just get distracted.
I keep reading about people unplugging from the internet, the constant connection. I need to focus too, but not by being absent but by being more present. One focus at a time, not several.
My focus in the kitchen in the last few days was on potatoes. I never really liked plain potatoes. I like chips and fries like any other person, but regular potatoes, cooked in salt water, not really. So it is really shocking to me, that I made a version of this Potato Salad for Lunch the last two days and made it again tonight for dinner. Crazy. I just love how the mustard adds some kick to it, I adore the sharpness of the vinegar, the greens. I already bought more potatoes today. It's a bit scary, really.

Roasted Carrot and Sesame Pesto

While I have been talking and thinking about "In Defense of Food" in the last weeks, some amazing bloggers started the Food Matters Project. I missed the first two weeks because I was away and not cooking much, but now I'm back and ready to join in.

Right now I want to talk about our holidays to Spain. I have been to Spain before, but never to the south, (or the north, but we kept that for other holidays). We travelled by bus (30+ hours) to Granada. You may have seen pictures of the Alhambra before, but it was even more breathtaking when I saw it in 3-D for the first time. We loved this town, it is just beautiful.
It was cold, though. The funny thing about it is that it was about 15°C warmer than in Switzerland, but they arent used to cold winters in Spain, and without or only little heating it was really cold at night. 
We then travelled on to Cordoba and Seville, both equally amazing cities. The last few days we then spent close to the sea, hiking a day, relaxing more.

Regarding food, I'm always a bit disappointed when in Spain. There is an abundace of fresh produce available, even now in winter when I usually struggle with finding new ways to cook carrots and beets. But the Spanish Cocina somehow manages to fry everything in sight, and to not use the vegetables around.

I researched some veggie friendly restaurants before we went to Spain, but even then it was quite difficult to eat healthy, and not just Tortilla Española. There were some great thing, too, though. I really enjoyed the Tostada con Tomate as a breakfast (Toasted Bread with Tomato, I'll share a recipe when I find out how to do this with canned tomatoes, or in Summer). I loved the gazpacho, though it was not really in season right now (it's a summer soup) and the fresh orange juices. I loved the idea of eggplant with honey, but have to find a way to do it without having to fry the eggplant. I had a great Tuna Tataki with Quinoa in a restaurant in Cordoba, and all the rest we ate was not bad either, just not how I would cook with all this produce available.

Well, I'm back home and ready to incorporate some spanish flavours into my cooking. An idea for a vegtable-heavy paella is forming in my head, and I have some things written down I want to try out over the next weeks. But right now, I want to share with you what I did with this weeks recipe of the Food Matters Project. This weeks recipe of the Food Matters Project, a Roasted Red Pepper and Walnut Pesto, was chosen by Heather from girlichef. I have made a similar spread or "pesto" before, and really loved it, but it is deep winter here in Switzerland now, so I wanted to change things up a bit. Well, a bit turned to quite a lot. My version of this pesto is Asian inspired, I guess I needed something different after a heavy dose of olive oil in Spain the last few days. Carrots are roasted with a few spices, then processed with sesame seeds and seasoned with soy sauce and mirin.

I used this pesto on top of a bowl of udon noodles (I would have used soba, but had none around), I guess you could use it as a dip or spread, too.

Homemade Buckwheat Pasta

I made pasta the other day, as part of my quest to make more of my own food. Today I want to share the recipe for the pasta itself, and share how I made it. I even refrained from using the pasta machine I actually have stolen borrowed from my parents. We used to make pasta a few times a year on a weekend, but it's been quite a while without. But making them all by myself, sweating in the process, getting quite a workout with all the kneading and rolling is my definition of fun, and it also ensures that everyone can do it. Yes, you can, too. It's simple, a bit time consuming, but simple. And fun, if you are like me. So let's start.

Roasted Winter Vegetable Tart

More and more I come to respect the course of the seasons, the long absence of summer fruit and vegetables. I had the desire to eat seasonally for a long time, but I still bought tomatoes in winter, unripe peaches or watery strawberries. I never bought said strawberries in fall or winter, but still, strawberries picked unripe and shipped and packaged never taste good. I always knew, but I still wanted that taste, bought the strawberries and was so disappointed. No more. Now I get most of my veggies in a weekly csa box, no eggplant or tomatoes from them right now. That's completely fine with me, their carrots and beets are beautiful. I get a lot of salad, and I'm really inspired to find more ways to eat them, and not let them eat me or me fridge (If you would like to hear about what to do with all the salad, let me know. I'd love to share what I did until now)

It feels like spring here, at the moment. I have no doubts that winter will soon return for a few more weeks, but right now the air smells of spring. The earth seems to awake, everything is just that bit greener. I really would love to eat asparagus right now. Or fresh peas, with just a little bit salt and butter.

I know that it is too early. My excitement will only grow more, and on the first day that I see asparagus here I'll be really happy. For now, I'm sticking, faithfully, to my root vegetables. They are not the only vegetables I eat right now (think cauliflower, cabbage, kale), but I just have a special place in my heart for them.
When I saw the January cover from bon appetit, I thought the tart it showed would feature many different winter vegetables. I was a bit disappointed, in the recipe and Ottolenghi, who I thougt was more of a seasonal cook. Peppers, tomatoes and eggplant right now?

Picture from last night. This is how the tart looked whole.

Hell no, and I dare to say that I think my version is better. I really loved the lemon zest, it added a much needed kick of freshness to the roasted vegetables.

And the homemade crust with buckwheat is just wonderful. I think I'll never go back to buying ready-to-use crust again, it just doesn't taste good and it contains strange things that I think have no business in a pie crust. You could use just your regular recipe for a pie crust, but adding buckwheat flour was a great idea. It makes play the crust a bigger role, not just the backdrop for what you put in there.

Before I forget to say it. It takes some time to prepare this tart. However, most of the time is spent chilling the dough, letting the vegetables roast, cool down etc. I'm currently writing some papers for college, and I just took some breaks from writing to prepare the different parts, but I really got something done too.

Red Lentil Falafel with Mint

Do you have any new year's resolutions?
I don't. Or not really, rather. I want to go to the cinema more often. To concerts, too.
I want to invite more people over, to cook more often for company.

I want to try new food. To cook through some of the recipes in my every growing folder of recipes-to-try.

I want to keep up with my friends, talk often.
I want to go to a Jazz club.
I want to go swimming in the Aare, the river here.
I want to go hiking.
Make lots of bite-sized food.

I want to finally make a poached egg.
I want to take a tour of the city I live in.
I want to make Ricotta.
I want to go canooing and snowshoeing.
I want to throw a party.
I want to go to some museums here.

And some things more.

But these are not resolutions. I keep this list so that I would always have an idea on what to do on a free day or weekend. I'll add to this list whenever I have a new idea.

After looking at this again, I now see that you could probably say that my new year's resolution is to make more amazing memories. I can live with that.


To start the year off on the healthy side, I made this Red Lentil Köfte. And did you notice I put "Make more bite-sized food" in my list? Let's start this year off right, 2012 is going to be the year of the small bites!
I saw different recipes for a Lentil Snack online, and found a recipe for Red Lentil Köfte in Purple Citrus and Sweet Perfume: Cuisine of the Eastern Mediterranean.
These little nuggets are quite crunchy, a bit spicy and really good for you.